CHAPTER FOURTEEN

On his way back through the sitting-room¹ he stopped to pick up the album. He was curious to see photographs of Annie's 40 family and of Annie herself when she was younger. When he opened the album, however, he found that it was full of stories cut from newspapers. The first two pages told of the wedding of Annie's parents and the birth of her elder brother, Paul -- another Paul in her life - and of Annie herself. She was born on I April 1943. She must have hated being an April Fool. The next page contained a report of a fire in a house in Hakersfield, California, in 1954. Five people had died in the fire. Three of them had been the children who lived in the groundfloor apartment, downstairs from the Wilkes family (who had been out of the house at the time). The fire had started because of a cigarette in the cellar². Annie's voice echoed³ in Paul's mind: God, I hated those children. Paul's blood began to run cold. But she was only eleven years old. That's old enough - old enough to let a candle burn down in the cellar so that the flame could light a pool of petrol. It's an old trick but hard to beat. Maybe she just wanted to frighten them and accidentally⁴ did more than that. But she did it, Paul. You know she did it. He turned the page and found a story about the death of Annie's father. He had fallen over a pile of clothes at the top of the stairs in his house and broken his neck. The newspaper called it a 'curious accident'. On the next page a newspaper from Los Angeles, hundreds of miles from Bakersfield, used exactly the same words - a 'curious accident'. This time it was a student nurse who had fallen over a dead cat at the top of the stairs and broken her neck. The name of the person who shared the student's apartment was Annie Wilkes. The year was 1959. Paul felt pure terror⁵ rise up in him. The 'accidents' had happened in different places and at different times, and no one had made the connection. Why should they? People were always falling down stairs. 41 Why had she killed them? He seemed to hear Annie's answers in his mind. The answers were absolutely mad, and Paul knew they were right. I killed her because she played the radio late at night; I killed her because she let her boyfriend kiss her too much; I killed her because I caught her cheating; I killed her because she caught me cheating. I killed her to see whether I could. What does it matter? She was just a Miss Clever - so I killed her. The next page of the album showed that Annie had graduated as a nurse and had got a job at St Joseph's Hospital in Pennsylvania. There followed several pages containing short newspaper reports of deaths at the hospital. There was nothing suspicious⁶ about any of these deaths. Most of the people were old and had been ill for a long time. Some were young - one was even a child - but they all had serious illnesses or injuries. And what were these reports doing in Annie's album? She had killed them all. The reports were so short that several could fit on a single page of the album - and the album was thick. Again Paul asked the question: Why, Annie? Why kill these people? Again he heard Annie's voice echoing⁷ in his mind: Because they were rats in a trap. And he remembered Annie's tears falling on the rat she held in her hand, while she said: 'Poor, poor things.' Over the next few years she had moved from hospital to hospital around the country. The pattern in the album was always the same: first, the list of new hospital staff, with Annie's name among them; then pages of short reports of deaths. In 1978, nine years ago, she had arrived at a hospital in Denver, Colorado. The usual pattern began again with a report of the death of an elderly woman. Then the pattern changed. Instead of reports of deaths there was a report of Annie's marriage to a man called Ralph Dugan, a doctor. There was a photograph of the house they had bought outside Sidewinder in 1979 - this house. Several months had passed without any killings⁸. It was unbelievable, but Annie must have been happy! 42 Then there was a report, from August 1980, of their divorce¹⁰. It was clear that he had divorced¹¹ her rather than the other way round. He had understood something about her. Maybe he had seen the cat at the top of the stairs - the one he was supposed to fall over. Annie had torn into this report with a pen as she wrote vicious¹² words across it, so that Paul had difficulty reading it. Annie moved to a hospital in Boulder¹³, Colorado. It was clear that she was very hurt and very angry, because the killings started again, and more often than before: the newspaper reports came every few days. God, how many did she kill? Why did nobody guess? At last, in 1982, Annie made a mistake. She moved to the childbirth department of the hospital. Annie had carefully kept a record of the whole story. Killing⁹ new-born babies is different from killing badly injured or seriously ill adults. Babies don't often die and people notice if they do. Parents care as well. And Annie had started to kill even healthy babies. They must have all seemed to her to be 'poor, poor things' by now - now that she was even crazier than before. Five babies died between January and March 1982. A hospital investigation¹⁴ found nothing suspicious in their deaths - which was not surprising, thought Paul, since Annie was the chief nurse of the department and was probably doing the investigation herself. Another baby had died in April. Two in May. Then at the beginning of June there was a newspaper report with the heading: NURSE WILKES QUESTIONED ON BABY DEATHS. The police were reported as saying that she was not under arrest and they were not accusing her of anything: they were just questioning her. And the next day: NURSE WILKES RELEASED¹⁵. She had got away with it. How? Paul couldn't imagine, but she had got away with it. Now, he thought, she will move to another hospital in another town. But no: she was too insane¹⁶ for that now. 43 The Boulder News, 2 July: THE HORROR¹⁷ CONTINUES: THPEE MORE BABIES DIE. Pages and pages of the album contained reports of Annie's arrest and trial. Annie had also included a selection¹⁸ of letters from the citizens of Boulder that had been printed in the newspaper?. It was clear that she had chosen the most vicious of the letters - those which reminded her that everyone was against her and that it was their fault. The newspapers began to call her 'the Dragon Lady'. But there was not enough evidence. On 16 December the huge heading in the paper read: DRAGON LADY INNOCENT¹⁹! There were plenty more pages in the album, but few of them had been used. Annie had kept any further reports that she had seen about the baby deaths, but there were no more killings until 1984. The Sidewinder Gazette had reported in November of that year the discovery of the body of a young man called Andrew Pomeroy. What was left of his body - some bits had been cut off with an axe²⁰ - had been found in a stream bed quite a few miles from the town. How far from here? Paul wondered. He turned the page and looked at the last report in the album. For a moment his breath stopped: it was about him! The report was only two weeks old. It had been cut out from Newsweek and told how 'famous novelist Paul Sheldon, last seen seven weeks ago in Boulder, Colorado' was missing²¹. The reporter had interviewed Paul's agent, but she had not been worried, probably because she thought Paul was staying with a woman he had met! Well, that was true, thought Paul. He put the album down carefully so that Annie would not see that it had been moved. He felt sick and close to tears. Outside, the wind suddenly blew heavy rain against the house and Paul jumped in fear. An hour later, full of Novril, the wind seemed comforting rather than frightening. He was thinking: So there's no way out. You can't escape, and Superman's too busy making films in Hollywood. But there's one thing you can do. Can you, Paul? Can you do it? The only way out of this was to kill her. Yes, I can. CH A PTER FIFTEEN The storm continued throughout the next day. The following night the clouds blew away and the temperature dropped. All the world outside froze solid. The roads were pure ice. Annie couldn't come back that day even if she was ready to. And that was too bad for the animals. He could hear the cows complaining in the barn²²: Annie hadn't milked them and they were in pain. As the days passed he heard no more noises from them. Paul's routine²³ was easy. During the daytime he ate food which Annie would not miss from the kitchen. She had stored hundreds of cans of food, and it was easy for Paul to take a few cans from here and a few from there so that Annie would not notice. So he had enough to eat, he took his tablets²⁴ regularly, slept and wrote his novel; in the evenings he played 'Can You?' with ideas about killing Annie. A lot of ideas came to him, but most of them were impossible or too complicated²⁵. This was no game, this was his life. It would have to be something simple. In the end he went to the kitchen and chose the longest, sharpest butcher's knife he could find. On the way back into his room he stopped to rub²⁶ at the new marks he was making on the door-frame. The marks were clearer than before. But it doesn't matter, he thought, because as soon as she returns, the first time she comes into my room . . . He pushed the knife under the mattress²⁷. When Annie came back he was gong to ask her for a drink of water. She would bend over to give it to him and then he would stab²⁸ her in the throat. Nothing complicated. Paul closed his eyes and went to sleep. When Annie's car came whispering into the farm at four o'clock that morning, with its engine and its lights switched off, he did not move. It was only when he felt the sting²⁹ of the syringe in his arm and woke to see her face close to his that he knew she was back. 45 He saw the syringe in her hand and understood that it hadn't been a bee: she had given him an injection³⁰.

1 sitting-room   

n.（BrE）客厅，起居室

参考例句：

• The sitting-room is clean.起居室很清洁。
• Each villa has a separate sitting-room.每栋别墅都有一间独立的起居室。

2 cellar   

n.地窖，地下室，酒窖

参考例句：

• He took a bottle of wine from the cellar.他从酒窖里拿出一瓶酒。
• The little girl hid away in the cellar.小姑娘藏在地下室里。

3 echoed   

重复，随声附和( echo的过去式和过去分词 )； 类似； 发射（声音等）； 发出回声

参考例句：

• Their shouts re-echoed through the darkness. 他们的喊声回荡在黑暗中。
• Their footsteps echoed in the silence. 他们的脚步声在一片寂静中回荡着。

4 accidentally   

adv.偶然地；意外地

参考例句：

• Mary accidentally let out that her mother had telephoned.玛丽无意中说出她的母亲来过电话。
• As I turned around,I accidentally hit him in the face.我转身时不经意撞了他的脸。

5 terror   

n.恐怖；可怖的人(事)

参考例句：

• We were in mortal terror of being found out. 我们非常害怕被发现。
• That guy is a proper terror. 那家伙真是讨厌。

6 suspicious   

adj.可疑的，容易引起怀疑的，猜疑的，疑心的

参考例句：

• A man was hanging about the house in a suspicious manner.一个男人在房子周围可疑地荡来荡去。
• He's so suspicious he would distrust his own mother.他这个人疑心太重，连自己的母亲也不相信。

7 echoing   

n. 回声现象 动词echo的现在分词

参考例句：

• The cave was echoing with shouts. 山洞内回荡着叫喊声。
• A long peal of thunder came echoing across the sky. 缓慢的拖着尾巴的雷声也来了。 来自子夜部分

8 killings   

谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发

参考例句：

• His statement was seen as an allusion to the recent drug-related killings. 他的声明被视为暗指最近与毒品有关的多起凶杀案。
• The government issued a statement condemning the killings. 政府发表声明谴责这些凶杀事件。

9 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

10 divorce   

n.离婚；分离；vi.离婚；vt.离婚；脱离

参考例句：

• Did he divorce his wife or did she divorce him?是他要和妻子离婚，还是妻子要和他离婚？
• None of us like the divorce of word and deed.我们都不喜欢言行不一。

11 divorced   

adj.离婚的；分开的；不相干的；脱离的v.与…离婚(divorce的过去式和过去分词)；分离；与某人离婚，判某人离婚

参考例句：

• Apparently they are getting divorced soon. 看样子，他们很快就要离婚。
• Many divorced men remarry and have second families. 许多离婚的男子再婚组成了新的家庭。

12 vicious   

adj.恶毒的，恶意的，凶残的，剧烈的，严重的

参考例句：

• He gave the dog a vicious blow with his stick.他朝着那只狗狠狠地打了一棍子。
• The author portrayed his father as a vicious drunkard.作者把他父亲描绘成一个可恶的酒鬼。

13 boulder   

n.巨砾；卵石，圆石

参考例句：

• We all heaved together and removed the boulder.大家一齐用劲，把大石头搬开了。
• He stepped clear of the boulder.他从大石头后面走了出来。

14 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

15 released   

v.释放( release的过去式和过去分词 )；放开；发布；发行

参考例句：

• He was released on bail pending committal proceedings. 他交保获释正在候审。
• With hindsight it is easy to say they should not have released him. 事后才说他们本不应该释放他，这倒容易。

16 insane   

adj.蠢极的，荒唐的，精神错乱的，疯狂的

参考例句：

• Insane people are sometimes dangerous.精神病人有时非常危险。
• The letter made her insane with jealousy.那封信使她妒忌得发疯。

17 horror   

n.惊骇，恐怖，惨事，极端厌恶

参考例句：

• The public has been awakened to the full horror of the situation.公众完全意识到了这一状况的可怕程度。
• The thought of working nights fills me with abject horror.一想到要夜间工作我就觉得惨兮兮的。

18 selection   

n.选择，挑选，精选品，可选择的东西

参考例句：

• We left the selection of the team to the captain.我们把挑选队员的工作交给了队长。
• The shop has a fine selection of cheeses.那家商店有各种精美乳酪可供选购。

19 innocent   

adj.无罪的，清白的；无害的；天真的，单纯的

参考例句：

• I'm not quite so innocent as to believe that.我还不至于简单到相信那种事的地步。
• I was very young,and very innocent.我那时非常年轻，幼稚无知。

20 axe   

n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减

参考例句：

• Be careful with that sharp axe.那把斧子很锋利，你要当心。
• The edge of this axe has turned.这把斧子卷了刃了。

21 missing   

adj.遗失的，缺少的，失踪的

参考例句：

• Check the tools and see if anything is missing.检点一下工具，看有无丢失。
• All the others are here;he's the only one missing.别人都来了，就短他一个。

22 barn   

n.谷仓，饲料仓，牲口棚

参考例句：

• That big building is a barn for keeping the grain.那幢大房子是存放粮食的谷仓。
• The cows were driven into the barn.牛被赶进了牲口棚。

23 routine   

n.例行公事，惯例；adj.例行的，常规的

参考例句：

• It is everyday routine.这是每天的例行公事。
• She found the hospital routine slightly dull.她感到医院的工作有点枯燥乏味。

24 tablets   

n.药片( tablet的名词复数 )；（木、竹）简；碑；一块肥皂

参考例句：

• The tablets may make you feel drowsy. 这药片可能会使你昏昏欲睡。
• Take two tablets with water before meals. 每次两片，饭前用水冲服。

25 complicated   

adj.错综复杂的，麻烦的，结构复杂的

参考例句：

• The poem is so complicated that I cannot make out its meaning.这首诗太复杂，我理解不了它的意思。
• This is the most complicated case I have ever handled.这是我所处理过的最为复杂的案子。

26 rub   

n.摩擦，困难，障碍，难点，磨损处；vt.擦，搓，摩擦，惹怒；vi.摩擦，擦破

参考例句：

• Don't let the wire rub up against the pipe.别让电线碰到管子上。
• He used to rub up against many famous movie stars.他过去经常偶然碰到许多有名的影星。

27 mattress   

n.床垫，床褥

参考例句：

• The straw mattress needs to be aired.草垫子该晾一晾了。
• The new mattress I bought sags in the middle.我买的新床垫中间陷了下去。

28 stab   

n.刺，戳，刺伤的伤口，剧痛，尝试；vt.刺伤，中伤；vi.刺，扎

参考例句：

• I found a stab wound on his leg.我在他的腿上发现一处刺伤。
• Can I stab at the meat with my knife to see if it is well cooked.为了看看肉是否煮熟，我可以在肉上戳个洞吗？

29 sting   

vt.激怒，刺痛，刺伤，蛰伤；n.刺痛，刺伤

参考例句：

• Most flies do not sting.大多数苍蝇不叮人。
• The scorpion has a sting that can be deadly.蝎子有可以致命的螫针。

30 injection   

n.注射，注入；注射液

参考例句：

• Those drugs are given by injection as well as through the mouth.那些药品可以注射，也可以口服。
• She pressed the patient a bit too hard when she gave him an injection.她打针时手重了些。